The Research Assignment Calculator (TRAC)

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Welcome

Welcome, this research guide was created to assist you in locating, evaluating, and using scholarly resources for HUMN 100-Introduction to Humanities. Here you will find listed a variety of resources to help you as you conduct your research specifically for this class.

Searching Tips

Searching Tips and Techniques

Learning the basics of how
to search will save you much time and frustration. These tips and techniques can
be used for any research you may be doing, no matter what the topic might
be.

Determining the correct search terminology is “half the battle.” To begin
this process list possible search terms and include any synonyms, using OR
between each word.

Using OR

Finding and Combining Search Terms: Using
AND

Searching Tips and techniques

If you want more than one term to be included in your search use AND between the
terms. This is used to narrow a search.

Using AND

Excluding Search Terms: Using NOT

Searching Tips and techniques

There may be times when you need to exclude a term altogether
in order to focus your search.

Using NOT

Searching Tips and techniques

Searching for an Exact Phrase: Using Quotation
Marks

Many
library databases work similarly to Google -- that is, when you want to search
for an exact phrase rather than for separate keywords, you should enclose the
phrase within quotation marks.

Finding Variations of Search Terms: Using
Truncation

Searching Tips and techniques

Another useful trick is to truncate the search
term.

The usual symbol is an asterisk (*), but check the database HELP screen for
to determine the symbol for that database.

Although this is a useful tool, especially if you want to retrieve results
with all possible word endings, it can also add unrelated items
to your results.

Some databases may not allow truncated words if the possible results are too
large and if this happens add more of the root word.

Truncation

Keyword Searching

If you are unsure of the
correct vocabulary for a particular database, begin with a keyword search,
sometimes referred to as a default search.

Keyword searching looks for
the search term(s) anywhere in the record for an article, which means that the
keyword(s) could be located in the article's title, abstract, or body, or the
keyword might be a subject term that the database uses. A keyword search usually
retrieves numerous records, many of which may prove to be totally unrelated to
your topic. But keyword searching is a perfectly acceptable way to begin a
database search; you can always narrow your search if you find that too many
records are retrieved.

Subject
Searching

Subject terms (also
sometimes called descriptors) are words that are chosen from a set list and that
are used by the editors of a database to describe all of the articles in the
database that deal with a particular topic.

lf you are unsure of the
specific subject/descriptor term that a database uses for your topic, try first
conducting a keyword search. Then, when you find an article that looks useful
for your topic, open up the record for that article (by clicking on the article
title) and take a look at the subject terms that the database's editors assigned
to the article.

You can then re-run your
search using those subject terms instead of or in addition to the terms that you
originally used. This should retrieve articles that are more relevant to your
research topic.

Subject Searching

Thesauri

Some databases also include
an online thesaurus in which you can enter a keyword and see the terms that the
database uses for your keyword. Consulting a database's thesaurus is especially
useful as a way of finding related terms that you might not have considered.